June 23, 2004 Wisconsin Outbreak

[Andy Wehrle]

Is there ANYBODY who chased the central & southern Wisconsin outbreak on June 23, 2004? All the chasers from Wisconsin that I know of either chase out of state or have stopped updating their websites. I would really like to know if anyone witnessed/photographed/videotaped the 17 tornadoes statewide that day. I saw the wall cloud from the Madison ex-tornadic supercell pass to my north...it was not clearly rotating at the time and was scuddy and disorganized. It still looked cool, but of course my camcorder chose that moment to suffer a tape jam and I have no images of it. All I have are a few video stills of some intra-cloud lightning strikes earlier on. The only tornado pictures I have seen from the outbreak are a sunset-backlit tornado near Little Chute in Outagamie County (on the NWS-GRB web site), a video of that same tornado shown on TWC the next day, a photo of part of the Madison tornado on the NWS-MKX site (most of the tornado is hidden by buildings in the picture), and a very shaky home video of a rapidly rotating funnel cloud over Madison that would soon become that tornado. One F3 tornado (a killer unfortunately), two F2 tornadoes, many F1s and several F0s, 17 in all. The 'ol Badger State seldom sees days like that. I am rather suprised by the seeming lack of photos/video of the tornadoes given the populated areas many of them passed close to/through. At one point there even seemed to have been a tornado merger...a rare occurence indeed.

 

[Sam Sagnella]

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/mkx/document/tor/062304.php

This is WFOMKX's write-up on the event. It has some very good pictures of both storms and damage, including a pic of the downtown Madison tornado.

 

[Andy Wehrle]

Thanks, but I've seen it.

Yeah, that's the one I was talking about. There are some very nice pictures of the storm, but only 1 of the tornado itself, and in that one it is partially hidden by buildings.

 

[Chris Gullikson]

I was 5 west of the location of touchdown of the Madison tornado, looking at an OK looking base to my west but left the location to go to Cross Plains for a seemingly better looking cell. The storm I was initially on went tornadic but I was never able to get back to it due to traffic.
I usually do not do well when I chase so close to home...

http://www.f5hunter.com/6-23-04

 

[Andy Wehrle]

Nice pics Chris? Was that base rotating?

 

[Andy Wehrle]

That should be a period, not a question mark after the first sentence. Silly me.

 

[Chris Gullikson]

Yes, it had a mild cyclonic drift to it that was interesting, but didn't scream out to me that it was going to produce.
About 10 minutes after I left it it I was hearing a few reports of wild rotation on the west side of Madison which I dismissed as over-zealous spotters.
Sure wish I would have stayed with it, would have been a very easy intercept since I would have driven right along with it on Mineral Point road.

 

[Doug Raflik]

Still no pictures of tornados, but the nasty looking storm as it neared Waupun. These are my brothers pics. Crappy day for me. I left the west side of Madison, a half hour BEFORE that area got hit with a tornado, to try to make it home before that area (Waupun) got hit. I ended up half way between both events. ARGHHH!!!

http://www.jeffraflik.com/storm.6-23-04.htm